The Culinary Adventure of Two Sisters in a Dorm Room

Tag Archives: cheesecake cookies

It’s really really hard to study because all I want to do is bake. Most students I know want to sleep or watch Netflix during this stressful time of year. Me? I want to bake scones, quick breads, and these lemon bars. But I shouldn’t, because baking in a dorm room takes TWICE as long as baking in a normal house or apartment. It requires several 3 minute trips to the kitchen (about 5 minutes round trip). And I do this many many times.
First I have to run to the kitchen to pre-heat the oven. Then I go back to my room and bring the prepared cookie sheets with the cookies already scooped on there. I usually have to stack them on top of each other and smoosh the cookie dough on the bottom tray because there’s no way to open doors and carry 2 trays of cookies. Then I get to the kitchen, pop them in the oven, and set my alarm for 12 minutes. And then I go back to my room to try to squeeze in some studying (but really I’m just on Facebook). Then my alarm goes off and I trek back down with my oven mitts in hand. I can only take one hot tray at a time (I can’t stack them like I did before), so that’s 2 trips. And then I let the cookies cool on my bed and unload the trays so that I can scoop the cookie dough and repeat this process for THREE MORE TIMES. It took me 2 whole hours to bake a batch of Strawberry Cheesecake Cookies.

That’s time I should have spent studying for my two finals that are happening in less than 48 hours. But that’s okay. Because I’m baking for a good cause–the cafe I opened up for my residents. I’ve opened this cafe for the past 4 semesters and this will be my very last time doing it because I am GRADUATING and finally moving out of a dormitory.

I have this baking “bug” worse than I ever had before. I couldn’t figure it out for a while but I think I finallly pinned it down. This is one of the last opportunities I’ll get to “bake on the bed.” I complain about the hardships of having all my baking stuff in one crate and coating my whole room in flour and having to make the super long trek to the kitchen, but I’m going to miss having to work hard to make the food. I’m going to miss having 300 eager mouths to feed. I will miss their reactions like “Ohhhh this is SO good.” (A guy just seriously took a bite out of a cheesecake cookie right now and said that while simultaneously grabbing a second one). I’m going to miss having people to pawn off my burnt cookies to because luckily there are people in this world that actually prefer burnt cookies. I’m going to miss being in college.

So here’s to one of my last blog posts as a college undergraduate…more senior pictures and sappy posts to come.